Title: More a Soldier
Author: knightshade
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Ben is gone. Han is gone. Luke is gone. Leia is left to pick up the pieces alone and she gets new information that will make that even harder. Pre-TFA.
Disclaimer: Own them, I do not. It is Lucas (or Disney) you seek.
Author's Notes: No, I don't really think this is the path they're going to take with it, but I kind of liked the idea. It's fun to play with in fic either way and it's certainly as plausible as other possible origins. But I do expect it to be overcome by events once VIII comes out. J
More a Soldier
She did not need … this. Not right now. Leia could not take this.
Ben was gone. Han was gone. Luke was gone. Everyone. Gone.
She did not need this.
Leia sank down onto her bed. The one she shared with Han. The one that was empty now. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, resting her head on her fist, her knuckles pressed to her mouth. What was she going to do now?
There was a constant swirl of activity outside her door. She and Han were at ground zero of the efforts to fully eradicate the vestiges of Palpatine's Empire. There was never a moment of true calm, peace, or quiet. Ben had grown up playing with his model x-wings in the shadow of real ones, eyeing the blasters on everyone's belts, lost in the seemingly infinite places to hide on the Falcon. Now he was lost somewhere out there, lost to all of them. Was it his upbringing? Was it being sent away? Was it being forever on the fringes of war and conflict - did it permeate his soul? Or was it earlier than that? Was it something he sensed from her long before he was even born? Was it the stress, the fact that she hadn't taken it easy, hadn't gotten off her feet, had wanted to still be who she was? Was that where the darkness came from?
Or did it go back even farther? Was the Skywalker line just cursed? She knew Luke felt that way sometimes. She knew he felt responsible. She felt it in him as clearly as she had felt his presence on that weather vane so long ago. She had never cultivated her powers with the Force - she was a better soldier than mystic - but there were times when she felt what was on Luke's mind, could read him, almost as though she were feeling his emotions herself. It happened rarely and was probably more Luke projecting his emotions than it was her ability to read them, but it happened.
Damn them for leaving. Damn them for being so weak that they ran away. She hurt too. She hurt as badly as they did and she hadn't run away. They left. Her. Alone.
Leia sighed. It was a well-worn rut in her brain. She could go down that path of anger and loneliness or she could get up and go do something useful. There were stormtroopers to hunt down after all.
But she couldn't get up. She felt sick. Nauseous. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wished that Han would appear with tea in her stained mug along with some quip or harassment and a crooked smile. Like he had the last time she felt sick like this.
God, she missed him. He was an ass but she missed him so much she wanted to crumple into a ball and give up.
And she missed her little boy. She missed his silly squeals of laughter, hide and seek, and mussing that little mop of brown hair. Her little boy was gone, lost to the evils of the world. A participant in that evil. It had been five weeks since the … incident … at the school and she still couldn't wrap her mind around it. Couldn't accept that her son could be capable of such evil. It just didn't square with the child who had asked her to kiss his stuffed Wookiee at bedtime every night.
Leia closed her eyes, tried to block out all the noise outside her door, the screaming of the x-wings overhead, the chaos in her own mind. She tried to block it all out and become as calm as Luke sitting on a rock at his school. It took a while, but all the static cleared, the pain receded to somewhere else in her mind, and she felt … something else. Someone else.
A girl.
Her baby was a girl.
Leia wanted to cry but the tears wouldn't come. Even in her hormonal state, they wouldn't come. She was more soldier than mystic and unfortunately more soldier than mother too. She loved Ben with all her heart, but she had let Luke him take him. She had let Luke try to train him. She had not been mother enough to protect Ben, to keep him safe from all the evil in the world.
She could not fail again.
How the hell was she going to do this without Han? She did not enjoy being pregnant. The aches and fatigue and limitations grated on her. She hated everyone walking on eggshells around her, not letting her lift anything or be near the fighters or even walk up the Falcon's ramp unescorted lest she trip. At least Han had been able to see when she was frustrated and tell her to go out back and shoot something. He'd hand her a blaster and tell her not to point it at anyone in particular. Han didn't treat her like a fragile flower. He knew she hated that.
She could not do this without him.
Leia closed her eyes and tried to think. She had quietly gone into town to get the test. She didn't want the base medic to know. The trials and tribulations of the Solo/Skywalker family were valuable rumor fodder. For weeks she hadn't been able enter a room without causing awkward silences, shuffling of feet, and ducked heads. That had finally slowed to a stop, thankfully. People gave her a wide berth but they seemed to have moved on to other concerns. If word got out that she was pregnant…Leia didn't want to think about that.
Han was gone, Luke was gone, there was no reason she had to stay. There was always a need for deep cover spies on remote planets. She could go off to an outer planet, have the baby, and no one would be the wiser. They would assume she was running away like Han and Luke, but she could do something useful. She could help the new Republic clean up the remnants of the Empire. No one would suspect a pregnant woman was a spy, not if she went far enough into the galaxy's fringes where no one knew her. It might even be good for her career. She had battle experience so proving she could handle undercover work would make her that much more valuable to the new Republic.
A plan started to coalesce. She needed to pack up some things to put in storage. Since their life had always been nomadic, they didn't have much. It wouldn't take long. She'd talk to Mon Mothma tomorrow and after that, she'd disappear into the galaxy for a while.
Leia went to the kitchen and made her own damn tea, contemplating her stained cup. She didn't want to do this alone, didn't want to be without Han, but he hadn't left her much choice. She wasn't a fragile flower. And she had no one to prove that to other than herself.
She would go. She would have their baby. She would find someone to raise her. Then she would figure out where she was going to go from there. Feeling like she had a plan, Leia felt a bit more at peace. She was a soldier. She could come up with a plan and execute it. Even when she was hurt, even when she was lonely, even was she was heartbroken.
Because she was more than a soldier.
Leia was a fighter.
And she didn't know how to give up.
xXxXxXx
-knightshade
January 29, 2016